Economic gloom in America, G-wagons for Moscow, OPEC wobbles and Luhmann's last lecture
Great links, images and reading from Chartbook Newsletter
Adrian Stimson, Buffalo Boy at Burning Man, 2004. Stimson’s art reflects on the unequal encounters and the resulting fusions between his indigenous Siksika Nation and the settler-colonial process in Canada, described well here:
Stimson's performance art looks at identity construction, specifically the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. Buffalo Boy and The Shaman Exterminator are two reoccurring personas. Stimson’s installation work primarily examines the residential school experience; he attended three residential schools in his life. He has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss and resilience.
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Misery signalling
US consumer sentiment is becoming the latest victim of expressive responding, where people give incorrect answers to questions to signal wider tribal political or social affiliations. In this case, that means Republicans leaning into pessimism in their answers, but it diverges from their actual consumer behaviour:
This is far more pronounced in the US than anywhere else. Confidence in Europe is where you would expect it to be based on actual experience. That is not true in the USA:
Source: FT
One key German export for Moscow
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The UK since 1850: the making of a European economy
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Still the hegemon: America and oil
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Adrian Stimson, Shaman Exterminator Sunrise 2, 2005. Image courtesy of the artist, photography by Happy (Ian) Grove.
Down with manufacturing, up with workers?
This is a striking but misleading image to accompany an otherwise excellent essay on a “golden age” for workers around the world — thanks to Christian Odendahl. The image confirms that a jobs strategy in America cannot concentrate its hopes on manufacturing, but need this decline in steady and stable form of work mean doom for workers? All the language around “precarity” in recent years has tended in that direction. But the story emerging from the data is more intriguing:
In 2013 America’s Federal Reserve thought that unemployment would settle at 5.6% in the long run. By 2019 that estimate had fallen to 4.1%. The IMF thought that Germany was close to full employment in 2012. The country then added 2.8m jobs without unusual wage growth.
In a recent paper, Mr Autor and colleagues demonstrate that tight American labour markets are leading to fast wage growth, as workers switch jobs for better pay, and that poorer employees are benefiting most of all… The researchers reckon that, since 2020, some two-fifths of the rise in wage inequality over the past four decades has been undone.
Source: The Economist
Niklas Luhmann’s final lecture at Bielefeld
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Making a paper jet
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Adrian Stimson, Shaman Exterminator Births Naked Napi, 2019
